Comments on: Advertising for weapons designers

By: Neal R. M.

Neal R. M. — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 03:10:58 +0000

My High school Chemistry teacher and her then late husband worked together at Los Alamos in the early 60′s. She was in her mid 30′s when I knew her, however she appeared to be about 65 or so. The apparent premature aging was caused by radiation exposure during the accident that killed her husband and probably doomed her to a foreshortened life.

By: David S.

David S. — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 21:55:39 +0000

Makes you wonder why N. Korea, Israel and Iran, etc. haven’t thought to employ Madison Ave to help them recruit…

By: Peter Nielsen

Peter Nielsen — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:17:22 +0000

Oh yes, while Security concerns remained strong. Indeed they were dominant, the “brick wall” I ran into. And this Security culture went sideways, into non-military areas. The IBM labs in San Jose 1969-70, Monterey Hwy end of Cottle Road, were extremely secure, high barbed wire fences, armed guards, as I recall . . .

By: Peter Nielsen

Peter Nielsen — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 22:05:09 +0000

I am sorry but, as usual for me, I understand what Alex is on about from “left field”. Inter-power rivalry, games and gamesmanship did not stop when the world went nuclear. It continued, only secretly ! ! !
Our Anglosphere is in decline compared to East Asia. Not its English language Internet and Science cultures, but its human and humanistic discourse, and so on. Hence what Alex is on about . . .
Alex’s article resonated strongly with me because, as a result of the above-mentioned and other early influences, I was sold on Atoms for Peace, and graduated into nuclear physics, worked in that field for years as well as other branches of Physics, and computers and so on.
I ran into a brick wall in my first attempts at nuclear physics jobs in Australia and Sweden largely because (as I found out later) both countries were seriously considering developing their own nuclear bombs at that time, 1966, an immense problem for me because my father’s influence (which was leftish) had been noted.
I was an excellent Physics Abstract researcher, so I became a good background observer of the nuclear arms race, nuclear gamesmanship and so on, years ahead of the MainStream Media (MSM) (academic articles started 1980).
I informed students ~1977, what was going on in that regard in central Australia. Busloads of students subsequently went there. These included the baby Julian Assange, with his mother.
My first social memories are of post-WW2 exuberance, but I learned wartime discipline because my friends were always older and remembered the war, and I was in a Boy’s Brass Band for 5 years and we played military music, saw veterans and so on, in 3 country towns on ANZAC day every year.
The past is well preserved in me because I have been living in Tasmania for 32 years, with roots here going back to the convicts. Tasmania is profoundly insular. Its population has been steady at ~1/2 million for ~100 years!
So what I see in those ads surprises me not at all. I simply see them as consistent with the nuclear gamesmanship I have been following for ~40 years. Post-Imperial ascendancy/descendancy is also involved, i e rise and fall of what has become of empires.

By: Peter Nielsen

Peter Nielsen — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 23:59:40 +0000

Thanks Alex, heaps. I can relate strongly to what you write because I remember those days. I myself was extremely scared at the time, of nuclear war, effects thereof. Posters for a Hiroshima doco were being prominently displayed where I was living (in Launceston, Tasmania) during that period, and I vaguely recall seeing some/one of those ads, Scientific American being one of the mags that sucked me into Science as a schoolboy. My bus stop, was adjacent to the State Library Reading Room.
There are later associations also: I met a Sci Am writer when I was working at the IBM lab in San Jose 1970 (where Silicon Valley started). Most interestingly though:
Your article illuminates the world of “the top 15 US weapons labs” prior to DOE takeover during the Carter Administration, with subsequent decline of morale and security, supposedly, due to replacement of physicists in key administrative positions, by “anti-nuclear” environmentalists, “feminists” and so on . . .

By: Bill Higgins

Bill Higgins — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:41:22 +0000

The "Leisurely Living" ad is eerily similar to, guess what, a picture of WWII Los Alamos physicists riding horseback in the mountains. I framegrabbed this photo of Robert Serber and Robert R. Wilson from Hugh Bradner's home movies-- about which I learned in reading this here blog.

By: Alex Wellerstein

Alex Wellerstein — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:47:44 +0000

Me neither. It's included in the glossary of Robert Howard's 1963 textbook, Nuclear Physics, though, for whatever it's worth. There are a few others in there that I hadn't seen before, too.

By: Blake

Blake — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 11:25:28 +0000

I have NEVER heard 20KeV called a “babe” before. That’s just silly.

By: TJ

TJ — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 22:18:43 +0000

This is brilliant – thanks for publishing.

By: Alex Wellerstein

Alex Wellerstein — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 18:42:31 +0000

Oh, of course. But it’s more of a late-1940s sort of coverage. What I have been struck by is how complicated the definition of the Cold War scientist gets once you get into the late 1950s and 1960s — once the idea of scientists as the new messiahs somewhat fades out.